hello this is bbc news. the headlines. families are told to buy their own oxygen as india hits a record number of new coronavirus cases for the fourth day in a row. the uk is sending more than 600 pieces of medical equipment to the country in a bid to help — including oxygen concentrators and ventilators. a senior minister declines to say whether borisjohnson was ever lent money or sought donations to help pay for the redecoration of his downing street flat. england's biggest football teams and the sport's governing bodies will stage a four—day boycott of social media from next friday to campaign for social media companies to crack down on online abuse. and, as la gears up for tonight's oscars, we go behind the scenes sta rs stars will be there in person at the

brand—new venue of la's historic union station. now on bbc news... our world. under cover of covid, the amazon rainforest, the greatest ecosystem on earth, is under attack. deforestation is at levels not seen for more than a decade. we meet the people on the frontline of the battle to the forest... shouting. translation: the prospectors used to be scared of being caught by us, l now they feel the president will protect them. ..and see the impact on the animals. the government is accused of encouraging the destruction.

and i'm on a mission to contact some old friends, the members of the most threatened tribe in the world. their relatives have never had contact with civilisation. are they safe? are their precious trees still standing? cheering. two years ago, a right—wing ex—army officer became the president of brazil. jair bolsonaro had a clear agenda for the amazon — and its people.

this is the story of my attempt to find what his policy of opening up the amazon means for a tribe i first met a decade ago. this is a community that grew up a couple of decades ago, uncontacted. to go to the jungle and meet people who've onlyjust made contact

with the modern world is quite extraordinary. katou! katou, katou! �*katou' means hello, apparently. i thought there'd be a huge chasm, a kind of cultural gap between us, and that we'd struggle to understand each other. emuka, that means i'm happy. i'm here with the awa. the awa live deep in the amazon rainforest, they're some of the last people on earth who still try to live as traditional hunter—gatherers. wow, the village... i really felt that they welcomed me in. we felt like we had a real connection together. i'm not going to dress like that, no. pira'i was probably my best buddy in the village. he was the one that instigated most of the jokes. you know, towards the end we went on this big hunt for two or three hours.

when we got back, everybody was really hot and sweaty. and they got to this lovely waterhole. and i thought, yeah, ok, i'll go swimming, and itjust seemed right to take my clothes off. laughter. then they played a trick on me, and it became clear that they were trying to, essentially, dress me like they dressed to hunt. you don't want to see it. laughter. it seemed they lived an idyllic life. but when i asked my new friend, pira'i, about what life was like when he was growing up, i learnt just how traumatic things had been for the tribe. this community that at that point had had no contact with the outside world.

the first contact was with loggers who'd come into the forest to cut their trees and were willing to shoot the community to get them out of the way. you could occasionally hear chainsaws. that's how close the loggers were. all too soon i had to leave my new friends. but this was a special time for the amazon. in 2012, the brazilian government made stopping the destruction of the rainforest a priority and rates of deforestation were falling dramatically. a few years later, i received an extraordinary invitation. helicopter blades whirring. well, after years of neglect, the brazilian government has finally decided to do something. we are flying into a base camp they've set up just outside

the indigenous reserves, and that's where they're operating from. and from there, we're going to go into the forest. it was like flying into a kind of forward base in afghanistan or something. you just thought, hold on a second. the brazilian government, it really means business about protecting the awa. when we went back to the village, suddenly i started seeing all these familiar faces. katou? i think that's hello. hey, hello. i remember you. do you remember me? very good. yeah! but the best one was pira'i. 0h! no. we went into his house and he came out with a bit of string and waved it in front of me. not again! i've been tricked once, it's not happening again. laughter.

but probably the most amazing moment of all for me was when the operation awa decided they wanted to show the awa what they'd done. pira'i, who grew up uncontacted, now is flying in a helicopter. pira'i and a friend watched as government bulldozers destroyed the homes of farmers who'd illegally occupied the tribe's land and cut hundreds of hectares of trees. dogs barking. back at home, they wanted to tell the others what they'd seen.

it showed the brazilian government can protect the forest, if it wants to. pira'i was hopeful for the future. but that hope was short—lived. soon after i left, brazil entered a time of political turmoil. deforestation started to rise again. the most dramatic increase came two years ago, when president bolsonaro took power. as the coronavirus raged through brazil, killing tens of thousands of people, brazil's environment minister had other issues on his mind, as this recording of a cabinet meeting reveals. "we have a chance at this moment,

when the media's attention is almost exclusively on covid, and not the amazon," he says. "while things are quiet, let's do it all at once and change all the rules." there was a media storm. minister salles subsequently claimed what he wanted was to simplify the existing rules. but after that meeting, he withdrew protection from some of the forested areas of brazil. and president bolsonaro's government certainly appears to be dismantling some of the structures that had succeeded in holding back destruction in the amazon. the environmental police force, ibama, is on the front line of brazil's efforts to protect the forest. but some officers say they aren't getting the support from the president that they need. one of them agreed to speak to us anonymously. translation: i've never seen so many illegal goldmines. - the price of gold

is higher than ever. but also, the prospectors used to be scared of being caught by us. now they feel the president will protect them. explosion. in places where we didn't have incidents in the past, now loggers, prospectors, squatters are rioting. last year, an officer was trying to seize a vehicle that was taking timber from indigenous land. he got hit with a bottle, while the police that was meant to protect him just watched. the police are loyal to the president. in the past, the police would give us security during the operations. the brazilian government admits some local officials have withdrawn protection for environmental officers, but says this is not official policy. it has become guerrilla warfare. thejob is getting

more and more risky. people are blocking the road to stop us from doing ourjob. they feel they have the support from the government. we have just landed the helicopter, and the officers are going over to the truck here, which clearly has freshly cut logs on it. it is very different from how things used to work. over the years, i have been on a number ofjungle raids with the environmental police. the most impressive was, we flew with this female officer... ..to raid an illegal sawmill. we found the account books. look at this...

so they have the total value, 4,700 reals, and then, look, there's a fee here — 200 to pay the police, leaving them with 4,500 so this is extraordinary. this book is like the diary of the business and we've got payments to policemen, we've got how much money they are putting in the bank and it is a lot of money. we're £20,000, $30,000 they are making here. it was obvious that the guy with the money had run and left the little guys behind. and i remember talking to one of the guys about what it was like. at then at the end i remember saying to her, what are you going to do now and she said, "well, we can't leave it like this." with fire.

she is going to burn it down. it was obvious that ibama had the weight of law behind them. when we got to places where illegal activity was happening, people were genuinely frightened. burning the equipment used for deforestation has always been a key tactic, says our whistleblowing officer. the owners of the equipment normally escape when they hear the helicopter so we cannot prosecute them. over the years, we have seen that the most effective strategy to stop deforestation is to destroy their expensive equipment.

not any more, according to the brazilian president. despite what president bolsonaro says, when we asked the government, they said the rules on burning equipment have not changed, but funds have been cut. this year the environmental police received its lowest budget ever, and because deforestation is so high, germany and norway say they won't pay for its helicopters and vehicles any more. that and the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic explain why, when we spoke, there were no environmental police patrolling the amazon. it is a first time this has ever happened.

none of us are out in the field. last year, 4,200 square miles of forest was cleared 7 a 12—year high. those involved in illegal deforestation often believe the government will pardon their actions. it is notjust the amazon that's under attack, the neighbouring wetland, the pantanal, is burning too. last year, 50,000 hectares of this unique ecosystem was lost in the biggest fires ever recorded there. juliana camargo heads a charity that tried to rescue

wildlife during the fires. a source in the environmental police told us the government ordered them not to attend the fires. the brazilian government describes these claims as lies.

once the trees have been cleared, the land is often used for farming. ibama has just caught red—handed this illegal deforestation, using chains. the chains destroyed the vegetation and killed the wildlife, especially the babies who do not

have time to escape. there used to be a system where farmers caught in illegal activities like this would be blacklisted, making it harderfor them to sell their produce and to get loans. the farmers who were found deforesting, their name would be put on an align system whereby buyers would be able to check if they are buying from an area which has strong evidence of illegal deforestation. but since last year, there's been some major changes that make it harder for people to be embargoed, so enter the blacklist. the government told this programme the system of fines and blacklisting is obsolete and ineffective and is being modernised. but it makes it hard for buyers to check that agricultural products are deforestation—free and, all the while, business has been booming for amazon farmers.

but there is still some resistance to president bolsonaro. almost all my professional life, i was a legislative consultant in the chamber of deputies. suely araujo helped write the environmental laws that underpin brazil's efforts to tackle deforestation. the brazilian government told the bbc it believes it is necessary to bring economic prosperity to the amazon.

"poverty is the biggest enemy of the environment," a spokesperson told us. i cannot travel to the amazon because of the pandemic but i did manage to get in touch with my friend who sent me these pictures and recorded a message... and experts worry the amazon ecosystem itself is changing. i'm very concerned. previous research have been understanding that the amazon was much more resilient and that our tipping point, leading to the decivilization the large trenches of the forest

would happen if about 40% of the amazon was lost and now recent research is pointing towards figures closer to 20% — and we already are at those figures. it appears to be becoming less rainy and the fear is the forest could begin to give way to grassland. and the fortunes of the people who live in the jungle are also in the balance. to my astonishment, footage is released that shows some awa people still live uncontacted in the remaining islands of trees. a team of local people patrol the forest in an effort to protect them from the loggers.

the locals normally do not film out of respect. they decided to release this footage because the situation has become so critical, they want to highlight the danger these last remaining, uncontacted tribal people are in. this is an astonishing glimpse of one of the last people on earth who lives outside of what we call "civilisation". we will probably never know his name but my friend told me what it was like when he lived like this. "it is a life," he told me, "of constant fear."

hello. the sunny, dry theme to the april weather continued through the course of the weekend. this was the picture in wiltshire on sunday, so similar to many areas, blue sky overhead butjust quite dry and in fact quite cracked ground. some parts of southern england has seen barely any rainfall throughout the entire month so far. now this week a return to some scattered showers. we won't all be seeing them, but there is, thankfully, a little bit of rain in the forecast. and things turning a bit colder as well. we've got a small, slow—moving area of low pressure moving in from the north, slowly slipping south over the next few days. so monday morning, then, starts off on a bit of a milder note.

particularly for scotland where we've got more cloud. still likely to see a frost across parts of england and wales, particularly in the north. monday morning, then, initially quite a bit of cloud in the south but that will tend to break up so quite a lot of sunshine coming through. there will be more cloud for scotland with some patchy showers heading in and they will be heavier during the course of the afternoon for parts of eastern scotland. one or two into northern england and northern ireland. further south in the sunshine it's also less windy than recent days as well, so we are losing that biting easterly wind. still a bit of an onshore breeze making things cooler around the east coast, but further west temperatures for the likes of cardiff and belfast are up to about 16 degrees on monday. and then as we move through monday night into tuesday this area of low pressure still with us as it moves its way south we will start to see some showers rotating around that area of low pressure. so hit and miss scattered showers on tuesday, but they will probably avoid east anglia and the southeast where we could really do with a bit of rainfall around. staying quite mild in the south, up to about 16 degrees in the sunshine, but turning colder from the north

as the winds start to come in from a northerly direction. just seven degrees or so for aberdeen. into wednesday i think the focus of the showers probably for wales and the southwest of england. fewer showers around elsewhere, perhaps one or two around these east coasts where it is, again, going to feel chilly. just seven degrees for the likes of aberdeen. but could well be 15 or 16 for southern parts of england and wales too. but as low pressure drifts off towards the near continent that's going to open the doors for these cold north or north easterly winds, once again coming down from the arctic. so temperatures in the cold side towards the end of the week for thursday into friday, just about getting into double figures by day but do be prepared if you've got gardening plans, we could well see a return of frosty nights. bye for now.

international help is pledged for india as it battles a ferocious second wave of covid. its cities are struggling to cope, both with managing those lost to the virus and with keeping patients alive, with oxygen in short supply. the government is a literal failure. a person cannot live here in delhi. a person cannot even die peacefully in delhi. with the epidemic still growing, the uk and other countries are sending medical supplies to india. also tonight: the downing street refurbishment. it is still not clear how work on borisjohnson�*s flat was initially paid for. testing the covid waters. the carabou cup final allows 8000 spectators into wembley. and from the usual

red carpet to this. how a train station is hosting tonight's oscars.